The majority of children in care go to foster homes. These are placements in a private family and may last for weeks, months or years. When a placement is happy, it can turn lives around. Levels of self-esteem and mental health are shown to shoot up for many children who have spent six months in foster care.
There aren't enough foster carers to go round. The shortage may mean that children are placed a long way from where they originally lived. As Mike's story illustrates, this can work out well for some, but for others it means losing touch with friends, siblings and changing school. The shortage may also mean that instead of carefully finding a good match between child and foster carer, children are placed with whoever is available at the time. This is tough on both foster carers and children.
Children tell us both about inspirational, loving foster carers who have changed their lives and others who seem to be 'in it for the money' and give minimal support. As with residential care workers, we need to give greater value and training to our foster carers. By lessening the burden on individual foster carers, more will choose to stay in the system and a new generation of foster carers will join.
In theory, children should have some say about where they are placed. In practice, they may be moved on from a foster home where they are happy, or stuck in a place where they are not very happy depending on issues outside their control. As our research for The Journey Home revealed, sometimes children are returned to their birth parents with little preparation.
Recent figures show that 1,200 children currently in care have been moved around 10 or more times since entering the system. Aaron is someone who has experienced multiple moves and, as he explains, it's not always clear to the child where they are moving or why. It also means that as a child grows up, they don't have a single trusted adult who can help them steer through the complicated choices that teenagers have to make.
Foster carers - like teachers and social workers - also need to help young people achieve all they can. We're currently creating a CD-ROM to raise awareness among foster carers of the options open to children in care (available from early 2010).
Children with more difficult problems are also being placed with foster carers. The DCSF report Care Matters comments 'carer stress, and the need to respond to difficult behaviour, account for a high proportion of placement breakdowns and instability for children'.
A new form of foster care is just beginning to spread in the UK after being created in the US. It offers specialised care to teenagers who are on the verge of a criminal conviction, or to younger children who are acting wildly and have no boundaries. In these cases, children are placed with specially trained foster carers who have agreed to take a child with serious problems. There's a big emphasis on strong boundaries, predictable outcomes of rule breaking and keeping the child away from other young people who may act as an unhelpful influence on them. There's also strong ongoing support for the foster carers from professionals to make sure the placement works.
The future for fostering should be a system with more foster carers, with consistently high aspirations for children in their care. A better 'matching' service should mean that both children and foster carers find themselves living with someone who suits their personality and strengths.